hey are not large purchases, you see."

But neither he nor The Rat had bought anything at all, though the
ordinary-looking little package was plainly addressed to him and bore
the name of one of the big cheap shops. It felt as if it contained
something soft.

When he reached their bedroom, The Rat was gazing out of the window
watching every living thing which passed in the street below. He who
had never seen anything but London was absorbed by the spell of Paris
and was learning it by heart.

"Something has been sent to us. Look at this," said Marco.

The Rat was at his side at once. "What is it? Where did it come from?"

They opened the package and at first sight saw only several pairs of
quite common woolen socks. As Marco took up the sock in the middle of
the parcel, he felt that there was something inside it--something laid
flat and carefully. He put his hand in and drew out a number of
five-franc notes--not new ones, because new ones would have betrayed
themselves by crackling. These were old enough to be soft. But there
were enough of them to amount to a substantial sum.

"It is in small notes because poor boys would have only small ones. No
one will be surprised when we change these," The Rat said.

Each of them believed the package had been sent by the great lady, but
it had been done so carefully that not the slightest clue was furnished.

To The Rat, part of the deep excitement of "the Game" was the working
out of the plans and methods of each person concerned. He could not
have slept without working out some scheme which might have been used
in this case. It thrilled him to contemplate the difficulties the
great lady might have found herself obliged to overcome.

"Perhaps," he said, after thinking it over for some time, "she went to
a big common shop dressed as if she were an ordinary woman and bought
the socks and pretended she was going to carry them home herself. She
would do that so that she could take them into some corner and slip the
money in. Then, as she wanted to have them sent from the shop, perhaps
she bought some other things and asked the people to deliver the
packages to different places. The socks were sent to us and the other
things to some one else. She would go to a shop where no one knew her
and no one would expect to see her and she would wear clothes which
looked neither rich nor too poor."

He created the whole episode with all its details and explained them to